*There are a number of questions which are of major concern to those studying
the psychology of women and sex roles, which will be raised in various contexts throughout this book. These include:

1.

What are the effects of sexism or prejudicial attitudes upon women and men
today? How do these limit options for both sexes?

2.

What is the reason for differences between women and men? Do these differences have a biological basis or are they based solely upon the values and
teachings of our culture?

3.

What are the psychological effects of traditional sex roles upon women and
men? How are these sex roles changing? What will be the effects of these
changes on the lives of women and men?

4.

What factors serve to maintain traditional sex roles? Will these factors show
changes?

Unfortunately, each of these questions can be answered in many ways, depending upon which data one looks at and how the data are interpreted. As
we discuss in Chapter 2, there are many examples of sexism or biased thinking in social psychological research. Thus, it is difficult to know which studies should be accepted and which should be questioned or completely rejected. This book is an attempt to carefully review the existing research and
draw conclusions about what this research can tell us about the basic theoret‐

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